Hellsing

[Eagle Prince]

I heard this series was about Dracula, and being a sucker for the character I had to get it.  Well the complete season 1 costs 120$... it sort of ends with the idea that there would be a season 2 but I doubt there ever will be.

The series is an anime about the Hellsing organization, which is basically a group of monster hunters.  Their most powerful weapon is a vampire by the name of Arucard.  He was tamed by the Hellsing organization long ago and forced to work for them.  He is also insanely powerful and arrogant, but his powers are limited somehow (probably by a magic spell).  He says something like 'lifting power restriction to level 4, level 6,' etc.  He also doesn't pack a stake, he just slams his pointed hand through the vampire's chest to dust them, but he does pack a handgun with special explosive bullets.  The silver in the bullets is from a silver cross that was melted down along with some other details that I forget.

Anyway, its basically about Arucard killing vampires, although he does get into a few scraps with a vampire slayer from another monster hunter organization Iscariot.  In the first episode he also makes this young girl cop into a vampire, and she fights the urge to drink blood during the story.  Arucard also claims to be the last pure-blood vampire.  The vamps he hunts were artifically created with some type of microchip... wierd.

I would say you are better off spending 120$ for two seasons of Angel.  Its a better vampire show, and you get 44 episodes compared to 13 episodes of Hellsing.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

They say the books are much better. Haven't read them or watched it myself, though.

Arucard? "Alucard" is "Dracula" backwards...

[Spriggan]

And has been the star of several Castlevania games.

[Eagle Prince]

In Castlevania, Alucard is the half-vampire son of Dracula.  In Hellsing and a lot of other Dracula movies, Alucard is just Dracula using an anagram.  And I believe in one of the later episodes, Arucard meets another pureblood vampire and actually says its just an anagram.  But why they use Arucard instead of Alucard, I have no idea, probably some type of translation error.

I had heard that there was graphic novels of Hellsing, but I haven't seen them.  I'm not sure if I'd even buy them if I did.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Well, I hear they fight nazis instead of monsters. I do plan to check them out sometime.

[Eagle Prince]

I found the Magna, not sure if I'll get it though.  I didn't notice any differences in the story, of course I only read the first one since I was just sitting in the store with it.  What I read was exactly like the anime, down to the art being exact replicas of the scenes.  Might get a bit different later, though.

[Eagle Prince]

Okay, so I've watched these quite a few times now, and if nothing else they are fun to watch just for the one-liners.  But I think its really all about the final battle, the rest of the series is just kind of building into it.  Imagine Superman vs Doomsday, and Supes is getting his butt kicked... but then when Supes dies, he just got up and said, okay lets get to business for real now and pounded Doomsday down like any other thug.  That's basically the final battle.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

What I read was exactly like the anime, down to the art being exact replicas of the scenes.  Might get a bit different later, though.

Well, I still haven't read it myself, but the anime is based on the manga, not the other way around. If you see the exact same shots, it's because they took it from the manga.

Anyway, I believe the manga is still running in Japan.

[Eagle Prince]

There was 4 books, but I was surfing around on the Dark Horse Comics websight and saw that they had released a number 5 and working on 6.

The whole reason I was going through their website was actually I heard they were releasing an english translation of the first Vampire Hunter D novel.  It's on their site, and says it will come out in May.  I'm hoping they'll do more of the books, cause there's like over a dozen of them and still being written.

[Eagle Prince]

So I got the first 5 Hellsing magnas.  They are a bit different, but so are all book to movie conversions so that isn't really a surprise.  I think I like the anime better, the police girl is more developed, does a better job unveiling Alucard's powers, and its got the battle with Incognito which is just cool.  The biggest difference is mostly just the order that stuff takes place, or who does certain stuff.  Plus the magna goes on a bit further than the anime, although 4 and 5 are about this big war about to start.  It just gets started at the end of 5, so still got to wait until 6 to see what happens with that.